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Aug 31 2014

# London Grip New Poetry – Autumn 2014

*

This issue of London Grip features new poems by:

*Wendy French *Peter Kennedy *Teoti Jardine *Rob Yates *Jan Hutchison
*Mohammed Kamran *Antony Johae *Nancy Mattson *Ian C Smith
*Mary Franklin *Colin Bancroft *David Flynn
*Christopher Mulrooney *F M Brown *Sarah Doyle *Allen Ashley *Robert Nisbet
*Michael Thomas *Kerrin P Sharpe

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be obtained at LG New Poetry Autumn 2014

Please send submissions for the future issues to poetry@londongrip.co.uk, enclosing no more than three poems and including a brief, 2-3 line, biography

Editor’s Introduction

London Grip would like to welcome readers back from their summer travels with a fresh offering of new poetry. John Keats’ autumn may be a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Ours is a season of mists and mystery since we have compiled a selection of largely elusive, enigmatic and even downright menacing poetry.

The cover picture represents the moment of collapse of the Campanile in St Mark’s Square on July 14, 1902 and seems a suitably unsettling image to match the tone of this issue. Its appropriateness is hardly diminished by the fact that the photograph is reckoned by Wikipedia to be a fake: its doubtful provenance merely contributes to the atmosphere of uncertainty. The picture can, moreover, be somewhat tenuously related to Kerrin Sharpe’s remarkable sequence ‘answering the call’; and also to Nancy Mattson’s ’Honeymoon Flight, circa 1934’ and Peter Kennedy’s ‘La Galleria’ which touch respectively on the crumbling and eventual collapse of Mussolini’s regime in Italy.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs

http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/

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Wendy French: The Red Cheeked Head

    It’s my harvest festival, she explained
    to the nurse who helped carve the heart
    of the pumpkin  before the sharp knife
    was whisked away, locked in the drawer
    of the old smoking room. Fag ends swept in a corner.

    If only bishops had two heads some truth might emerge
    and she plucked  a half dead lily from her friend’s bouquet.
    A weeping head made in pottery was placed
    on the edge of the red flocked cloth, only crocodile tears
    have centre stage. She’d once remembered the rules of Chess.

    The bishop must look beyond the head to the window
    which is now open for the parakeets to fly in
    and drink from the sour wine.
    You don’t understand me, do you? She sang inventing
    words from a song she once thought she’d heard.

    The ears of this pottery head are so big
    and the cheeks so red but no one listens anymore,
    no one hears or see the cheeks rubbed in distress.
    Thank goodness for wheat grass that grows in abundance
    on the edge of sunlight catching sorrow in its stems.
    .

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Wendy French: Winter Weathers

    Because Thor has been at work again
    and no one ever answers the telephone;
    and because the persistent tone of the ring

    takes me down the line to where you might be
    near the upturned umbrella abandoned
    on Pendine Sands or blown to sea;

    and because you lost umbrella after umbrella
    like that, blaming the new winds,
    the in-coming tide, always finding an excuse.

    Because of all these signs or omens of wet sands,
    ferocious clouds, salt water seeping through shoes,
    the tufts of grass on the cliffs daring to raise their heads

    before morning and because when you opened the door
    that final time and said, 'This is it' and it was it
    I have to believe you're riding the amber storm,

    sailing the over-turned seas in a time I don't know.
    And maybe you're still dancing and maybe
    somewhere is that scarlet dress.
    .

Wendy French is currently poet in residence at the Macmillan Centre at UCLH. She has two poetry collections with Rockingham press and Tall Lighthouse. Her latest book is co-authored with Jane Kirwan, Born in the NHS, published by Hippocrates press. This book is poetry, fact, anecdote about living and working under the umbrella of the NHS.

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Peter Kennedy: Paradelle of a Thousand Ships

The paradelle was invented as a hoax by Billy Collins (then US Poet Laureate). A parody of the villanelle, it is ”one of the more demanding French fixed forms … a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only these words.”

    A family picture shows us gathered on the lawn.
    A family picture shows us gathered on the lawn.
    Informal.  All together.  Happy with ourselves.
    Informal.  All together.  Happy with ourselves.
    A gathered family shows ourselves together,
    Informal picture, happy the lawn with us all on.

    I wore pale trousers, white shoes.  No grey hair.
    I wore pale trousers, white shoes.  No grey hair.
    My beard was dark then, Helen, and your dark curls.
    My beard was dark then, Helen, and your dark curls.
    White my trousers and shoes, pale Helen; dark was I,
    Dark beard hair.  Your curls wore no grey then.

    One palsied daughter in her wheelchair.  The others kneel, or stand.
    One palsied daughter in her wheelchair.  The others kneel, or stand.
    A fleet of years set sail that distant day.
    A fleet of years set sail that distant day.
    Stand, distant daughter, fleet the palsied wheelchair years --
    That, or kneel; sail her one day in a set of others.

    Stand, others; picture trousers, curls, white lawn, dark family;
    Hair was wore informal.  A set of ourselves
    Shows us the palsied day -- or a dark wheelchair;
    And then the years that fleet on, all distant.
    Sail, happy Helen, one with your daughter together gathered;
    I, in my shoes, grey beard, kneel, pale.  No her.

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Peter Kennedy: La Galleria

    We went on handing the rocks
    from one to the next forward in line.
    It was the only means we had
    to make progress in the dark.

    La galleria dei partigiani -
    their secret route in the war.
    Now our only way through,
    flooded a foot deep.

    One false step and you were down
    in the water with a busted knee.
    We went on handing the rocks
    from one to the next forward in line.

    We placed them at the tunnel side
    as best we could to make a causeway.
    Each rearward rock was lifted,
    passed forward to become the lead rock.

    We went on handing the rocks
    from one to the next forward in line.

    Always forward.

.
When Peter Kennedy retired from his position as a consultant physician he was able to rekindle his interest in writing and poetry. He is a founder member of poetrywivenhoe.

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Teoti Jardine: Te Anau Glow Worm Caves

    Floating darkly,
    all bearings
    lost.

    Glow worms
    sprinkled
    overhead,

    guide
    me
    through.

    I reached
    past the
    why

    where
    silence
    whispers.

    There,  they
    anchored
    me.

.

Teoti Jardine was born in Queenstown New Zealand, of Maori, Irish and Scottish descent. His tribal affiliations are Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, and Kai Tahu. He completed the Hagley Writers Course in 2011, and has poetry published in The Christchurch Press, The Burwood Hospital News Letter, London Grip, Te Panui Runaka, Te Karaka, Ora Nui and Just another arts magazine. His short stories have been published in Flash Frontier’s International Issues, 2013.

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Rob Yates: Well and Water

    Outside the well is making great noises
    as if some titan fish were buried
    half in its stone wall, half in its water,
    letting loose godwide gulps of air
    that upflow and break for surface,
    burst and sound
    as the pale, thin rain falls
    on the poor roof.

Rob Yates is currently moving and gardening his way through South-East Asia. He previously came runner-up in Oxford University’s, St Peter’s College McKay Poetry Prize and is in the process of editing his first attempt at a novel, entitled Trumbling Grandsire. He hails from Essex.

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Jan Hutchison: Walking madly in the mountains

    my stick makes eccentric decisions
    without consulting me

    with a turn of its half-moon neck
    it kicks off with side-steps

    sometimes it seduces me
    with a three-legged flick-and-twist

    many times we crash on an icy slope -
    stare up in astonishment

    the stick measures the length
    of our footprints

    I find a crock of cloudberries
    with my dreaming hand

Jan Hutchison is represented in Essential NZ Poems and many other anthologies. Her most recent poetry collection is The Happiness of Rain.

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Mohammed Kamran: Subterfuge

    A sandal thrown into the gutter
    A knife kept on a kitchen counter
    Long lines outside the departmental store
    A shrill noise in the silence of a power cut

    To have an idea or to be completely clueless
    about life, about love, about yourself
    A life lived too fast as if in a daze
    The blue seas bank heavily on the steady beaches

    The last eagle over the lighthouse
    flies in a descending spiral
    A touch of velvet, and then of thorns
    Blue eyes in a pure white face

    A square made out of circles
    proving nothing’s what it seems
    Inside out is outside in
    A calender goes on and on, for pages

Mohammed Kamran is currently with the University of Delhi, He has a published novel to his name, Listen to Me (Amazon). He has also been involved with Marxist politics among the students union and traveling in the interior of the country to work with the labourers. In Delhi. He has been writing columns for various social satirical magazines but his artistic ambitions lie with the poetry of images similar to Rimbaud and Verlaine and the psychological prose of Proust and Joyce

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Antony Johae: At First in Kuwait (after Liberation, 1991)

    They put me in a hotel close to the airport.
    From the enclosed room where windows didn’t open
    and management supplied the air
    I saw silent cars cross bridges and underpasses
    or curved clover leaf to join
    a four-lane highway with large hard shoulder.
    Further off, blocks reached up to a petrol pall
    and an unfinished telephone tower into the black of an oil cloud
    aftermath of Saddam’s sabotage.
    With curtains buttoned back, an inside window
    looked down on a foyer where post-war,
    half-dismantled scaffolding part-revealed
    Tuscan marble, discreet lights,
    soft sofas and flowers in vast vases.

    In glass I dropped to the mezzanine
    glanced through fingered magazines
    thick with Dior, Givenchy, and Chanel,
    eyed the guests lounging,
    aproned serving girls – pretty and petite
    the doormen dark, the décor anodyne
    and thought I might have been elsewhere, or anywhere
    – at Madrid’s Marriot or Houston’s Hyatt
    or Holiday Inn, Hilton –
    but for my contract weighing on me
    as I waited.

    Then out of plush-muffled sounds
    I heard a woman’s cry reach to the roof
    an ululation so profound
    it moved me – to another place
    a distant desert in no city state
    encampment, water-hole
    men attired in white
    children sandal-less on sand
    black-covered women chatting
    – and when I returned
    there was a wedding party
    making for a hired room
    and all the while – at once rooted and remote –
    women shrilling
    for the sofa-seated couple.

.

Antony Johae has taught in Africa and the Middle East. Now writing freelance in the UK and Lebanon. This poem comes from an unpublished collection: Poems of the East.

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Nancy Mattson: Honeymoon Flight, circa 1934

    This is our honeymoon, so far so true.
    We packed light: a single valise between us,
    my new vanity case. Only the essentials
    for a long weekend in Tripoli.

    We leave on a wing and a whispered vow
    never to return to Rome, our jobs
    in plush quarters, hush-hush.
    Never again to follow orders,

    or smile at puffed-up little bosses.
    Never again to see our village homes
    or feast at our mammas’ tables. To praise
    Il Duce for his gifts to Italy? Never again.

    Yes, we are grateful for his first-class
    tickets on Ala Littoria, his new airline,
    that magnificent baby, futuristical, snappy,
    better than any in Europe, even the world!

    We will never forget his greasy speech
    at our wedding feast, his liquid praises
    to the bride. I’d rather have drowned
    with a dozen virgins than listen to more.

    When we are safe in the air we will laugh,
    free as swifts or swallows, even eagles!
    Not yet. We are still on the tarmac,
    hat brims down, chins to chests,

    your hands jammed deep in the pockets
    of your trenchcoat, your belt knotted
    tight as the grip I must keep on my
    blood-red handbag. Such soft kid.

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Nancy Mattson flew over seven time zones when she moved from western Canada to London in 1990. Her third full-length collection, Finns and Amazons (Arrowhead Press, 2012), begins with poems inspired by some early twentieth century Russian women artists but develops into a poetic search for her Finnish great-aunt who disappeared in 1939 in Stalinist Russia.

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Ian C Smith: The man who wasn’t there

    He has a knack of avoiding weddings;
    a dog dying, an expensive flight booked.
    When reviewed together, a dossier of excuses.
    It is not just weddings as anathema.
    Christmases, birthdays, trigger the effect
    cruising police cars impose on the guilty.
    His is the face missing in group photographs
    yet when he does mix he passes scrutiny.
    If cornered by the insistent camera
    his look is serious, a dust-jacket portrait.

    In photographs of his own weddings
    which he barely attended,
    his mute grimaces, failed smiles
    in mouldering albums, filed evidence,
    could almost be presciently photoshopped.
    When asked by a son how he proposed
    he said he only became betrothed in leap years,
    absolving himself of the consequences
    and the rash optimism of wives
    in one succinct sentence.

    On anniversaries that pass in silence
    does he press his face against a window
    hearing strange songs of wrong-doing,
    arms hanging limp, scorched throat aching,
    or is his meticulous exile sweet?

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Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in The Best Australian Poetry, London Grip, New Contrast, Poetry Salzburg Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Weekend Australian & Westerly. His latest book is Here Where I Work,Ginninderra Press (Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.

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Mary Franklin: Fear of Ghosts

    I am Shuswap.  When my husband died I knew
    what I had to do.  I dug a hole in the ground
    covered it with brush and tree trunks, sweated there
    all night.  At dawn, I bathed in a nearby creek
    rubbing my body with branches of spruce, needle tips
    broken, damp upon my skin, smelling of skunk.
    I stuck them in the ground around my wigwam,
    listened to their wind-blown swish, swish, swish.

    Hunters would not come near for fear of bad luck.
    Illness could strike anyone my shadow fell upon.
    That summer I slept on a bed of thorn bushes
    thrown on the floor to keep his ghost away.
    One winter day I crept into the potlatch,
    my heart pounding like a wolf's snared in a trap.
    I caught the elder's eye.  He nodded and I took
    my place once again among my people.

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Mary Franklin has had poems published in various poetry journals, anthologies and ezines in the UK, Canada, Australia and the USA.

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Colin Bancroft: Absence

    It is as though the world is aware of yours
    And mirrors it with its own.
    No sun. No sky. Just the blank canvas
    Of fog, primed with rain –
    Stretched across the fallen easel of the moor
    That drops off beyond the hedgerow to nothing.
    Trees loom as ragged patterns cut
    From this fine cloth of mist.
    Sounds muffle in this hush;
    Hearing the crackle and whir of tyres on the road
    Is like listening to a recording of an empty room.
    An absence looped over and over and

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Colin Bancroft is currently studying for an MA in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has previously had poems published in The Copperfield Review and Broken Wine Magazine. He has also been shortlisted for both the Manchester Bridgewater Prize and the New Holland Press competition.

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David Flynn: Hired Man

    He wasn't working.  Out.  He wasn't tried
    and true.
    I didn't like him.  One bit.  You didn't like
    his face.
    You didn't like.  His smell.
    Rotted apples.
    Sweetish.
    Rancid.  Son of a bitch.  He stole our
    money.
    He stole our car.  Away.  They found him
    deader
    than our love.  Is dead.  They said he
    suffered
     a stroke.  I say.  He just got
     too mean.

     Now what do we do.  Stuck with no car.
     Stuck in our house.  Now what do we do.

.
David Flynn was born in the textile mill company town of Bemis, TN. His jobs have included newspaper reporter, magazine editor and university teacher. He has five degrees and is both a Fulbright Senior Scholar and a Fulbright Senior Specialist currently on the roster. His literary publications total more than one hundred and forty. David Flynn’s writing blog, where he posts a new story and poem every month, is at http://writing-flynn.blogspot.com/

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Christopher Mulrooney: Fudd of Sheffield

    at home with Boudica or as she says Bulldyke
    guardian of the ancient pens
    he wallops around the venerable city
    like a cod long-shanked gravel-eyed
    electrified as to his step he knows all the latest
    and the earliest too their adopted son
    The Green Man of sorts mainly out
    a cold-blooded vegetable sort of lout
    and all the stodgy gets who are their friends in pub
    at Sheffield where the long knives come from

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Christopher Mulrooney is the author of symphony (The Moon Publishing & Printing), flotilla (Ood Press), viceroy (Kind of a Hurricane Press), and jamboree (Turf Lane Press, forthcoming). His work has recently appeared in The Interpreter’s House, West Wind Review, Zettel, Indefinite Space, California Quarterly, Soliloquies, Inscape, The Southampton Review, and Meat for Tea: The Valley Review.

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F.M. Brown: On A Balcony In Nice
(after hearing a song by Francois Poulenc)

    I'm on a broad balcony in Nice
    A gauzy breeze persuades the perfume of the young mimosa
    Up to where I stand
    And induces excitement and a final appearance of life
    In the desiccated scraps of older blossoms
    Scratching over the courtyard flagstones

    Beside me with no umbrella to eclipse it
    The furniture glows so dazzling white
    It seems to have a luminescence of its own
    On the table breakfast is set
    And a Swedish glass jug
    Filled with fresh orange juice

    I sip from a matching misted tumbler
    One hand resting on a chair back I stare out
    At a view which on other days I would find
    Breathtaking or a subject for meditation, even an inspiration
    Today it is just a backdrop
    And no more significant
    It might as well be Manchester
    Except then we would need a brolly
    And the whites wouldn't be quite so bright

    I am waiting for a young man
    At least they tell me he's young
    I know his face
    I have seen a photograph
    I know his name
    Thiery

    Lady, the song says
    Now you are too old to attract a lover
    But not yet grown out of wanting love
    There is only one answer for you
    Take a gigolo

    Thiery, I will say
    Come in
    Orange juice for you?
    I will appear impassive, controlled
    As I scrutinise his looks
    His manner
    His suitability for my purposes
    Will he examine me for possible pleasure
    Or purely for potential profit?
    Will I deceive myself he could grow to love me?
    No, no.  Don't answer the bell, Marie.
    Tell him that Madame is not at home.
    Do your hear me, Marie?

    Shake yourself, woman.  Pull yourself together.
    This is Manchester.
    That's the milkman at the door.
    Go and pay him
    And wipe that silly look off your face.

    Morning, Terry.  What's the damage?
    Bit steep this week, Mrs. Stone.
    Yes, that'll be all that extra orange juice.

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FM Brown was born in Sheffield but had to come south to soft Bedfordshire to begin writing poetry

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Sarah Doyle: The Philosophy of Stone

    Sticks and stones may break my bones.
    No moss upon those Rolling Stones.

    Tombstone. Ragstone.
    Kerbstone. Flagstone.
    Heart of stone. Whetstone.
    Hearthstone. Headstone.
    Silverstone. Stonewear.
    Sword-in-stone. Stony stare.
    Millstone. Milestone.
    Paving stone. Bile stone.

    Let he who is without sin cast the first –

    Stone deaf. Stone cold.
    Stone Age (very old).
    Stepping stone. Moonstone.
    Standing stone. Rune stone.
    Birthstone. Gravestone.
    Stone Roses (rave stone?).
    Limestone. Yellowstone.
    Gemstone. Rosetta Stone –

    Talk like an E-gyp-tian…

    Dry stone. Copestone.
    Sharon Stone. Soapstone.
    Gallstone. Freestone.
    Kidney stone. Keystone.
    Stone-broke. Toadstone.
    Breaking stone. Lodestone.
    Stone-head. Stone basin.
    Hailstone. Stone mason.

    Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw –

    Stone the crows! Stone me!
    Stonewall penalty!
    Stonehenge.  Rhinestone.
    Lose a stone? Grindstone.
    Blarney stone. Brimstone.
    Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
    Sandstone. Touchstone.
    And in this poem – much stone

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Sarah Doyle has been published in journals such as Poetry News, Orbis, The New Writer and The Dawntreader, and placed in various competitions. She is Poet-in-Residence to the Pre-Raphaelite Society, and co-hosts Rhyme and Rhythm Jazz-Poetry Club at Enfield’s Dugdale Theatre. www.sarahdoyle.co.uk

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Allen Ashley: End of the Line

    Now you’re painted in a corner,
    your line’s finished with “love”;
    you’re digging in the dictionary
    with “glove”, “dove” and “above”.

    You’ve angered Keats and Wordsworth,
    so steal from Harry Beck
    a way to take the poem on
    you’ve salvaged from the wreck.

    Don’t put love at the end of the line –
    too late the realisation:
    nothing fits and nothing rhymes
    except for termination.

    Don’t put love at the end of the line –
    too frequently she tends
    to be beyond your Oystercard;
    suspended at weekends.

    Brixton, Barking, Epping, Morden,
    all the way to Rayners Lane.
    Your car’s in hock, the night is young,
    you must catch the final train.

    Don’t put love at the end of the line –
    you’re left with one route out.
    If it’s High Barnet or Cockfosters,
    she knows you’re heading south.

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Allen Ashley works as a writer, editor, poet, writing tutor, critical reader and event host. He runs five writing groups including Clockhouse London Writers. www.allenashley.com

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Robert Nisbet: Mermaid

    Two decorators. Both of them drink,
    play cricket locally. Today, re-painting
    the large oak sign outside the Mermaid Inn.

    She reaches them, a little before noon,
    holiday-clad, a pretty girl, whose legs
    send their senses staggering with joy.

    Their thoughts click. She’s been on the box.
    Their memories sift like buzz-saws
    through their culture’s schedules.
    An early-evening sitcom. Barmaid. Sophie.
    Warm heart and cleavage.

    The smiles they force lie hushed
    upon their faces, as she moves,
    in her aura, through to the bar.

    She says ‘Hi’.

    They return now to their task, in turn
    flick brush strokes meaningfully
    on their slippery girl’s historic smile,
    her stylized breasts, her tail.

.
Robert Nisbet was for some years an associate lecturer in creative writing at Trinity College, Carmarthen. His short stories appear in his collection Downtrain (Parthian, 2004) and in Story II (Parthian, 2014), his poems in Merlin’s Lane (Prolebooks, 2011

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Michael Thomas: many mansions

    the shepherdess
    on the mantel
    looks up to heaven

    thinks about
    the promise of a house
    its many mansions

    wonders if
    there’s a mansion for her
    at least a room

    once her soul
    sheds her brass body
    with a quicksilver tear

    and if in fact
    she will like sitting
    fingers threaded

    in boxy air
    imagining others
    pent adjacently

    decorously walled
    folded on themselves
    stainless vesture

    given that the life
    for which she was made
    was all about hills

    bushes black with rain
    sopping tresses
    ewes pinned in thorn

    and sky
    lots of sky
    and never a room

    save the farmer’s
    of an evening
    ale and repletion

    candle-fire
    miles away
    over bony grass

    from where she dealt
    with blood
    with real lambs dying

.
Michael Thomas’s latest novel is Pilgrims at the White Horizon. His recent poetry collections include Batman’s Hill, South Staffs and The Girl from Midfoxfields. A new collection, Come to Pass, is forthcoming in 2014. His poetry and prose have appeared in The Antioch Review, Critical Survey, The London Magazine and the TLS. He is currently working on Nowherian, the memoirs of Grenadian traveller, Henderson Bray .
www.michaelwthomas.co.uk

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***

Kerrin P Sharpe: answering the call

    i)  the working drawings

    the drawings
    move from
    the tracing house

    to work
    the great
    bellows of the

    cathedral so
    the geometry
    of the air

    stays holy
    so the
    plans of small

    fish in
    this upturned
    boat become prayer

    ii) why talk to the bellows boy when you can speak to the blacksmith

    now my tongue is iron
    all 27 bones in my hands
    are quick-tempered birds

    here in the forge of the forest
    it takes 3 days to read the paper

    I would rather speak Polish
    than sign the sad hymns of fire

    when I saddle my carthorse
    my cold chisels and hammers
    close their dark wings

    only church bells nod to me

    iii) last supper in Venice

    on the dome of St Mark’s
    the air is so thin
    pigeons are breathless

    my wings are rungs of medals
    pinned to my singlet

    I fall with the rhythm of rowing
    into long narrow light
    bridges sigh like single oars

    no one expects me alive
    except my gondola

    and the jacket
    from my army days
    I call salvation

    iv) between the feet of angels

    between the feet of angels
    air is always
    the colour of holiness

         1 part sand
         2 parts fern
         And beechwood

    it’s not easy
    to coax a river
    into a spine of windows

    and often after the dance
    between lead and light
    our hats are the stars

    you point at

.
Kerrin P. Sharpe’s first book three days in a wishing well was published by VUP in 2012. Her work appeared in Oxford Poets 13 (Carcanet). Another book, there’s a medical name for this is forthcoming from VUP in August 2014.

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